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2022 MLB Season Thread

This might be a short thread in terms of the actually playing of baseball.
 
Nothing pisses me off more when two sides are both making $$ hand over fist and can’t come to an agreement.
Baseball is a dying sport. And instead of fixing it, they are just making it die faster.
Kids don’t watch it; most adults rarely have the 3 1/2 average hours it takes to sit down and watch as well.
I love baseball but am sick over this latest impasse.
 
But Manfred said he is just trying to give the fans what they want! Expanded playoffs and no shift. Neither of which I’ve heard one person ask for.
 
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33397392/mlb-lockout-only-reinforces-certain-ugliness-game

Disincentivizing tanking should be an easy decision, IMO. Tanking gains an MLB team relatively little. With basketball (for example), a single draft pick is 20% of the starting lineup, and a person who could be fed the ball as often as possible. With baseball, a single draft pick is 11% (or 10% if you are a DH pervert) of the starting lineup, and everyone needs to take a turn. Plus, an individual team's development system would have such an impact. Cleveland has had one of the better farm systems in the league despite never tanking. Same with the Dodgers. The Phillies have had four straight years of top 10 picks and almost nothing to show for it (jury is still out on Bohm). Tanking gives so little advantage compared to how much it hurts the game, but the owners IMO want less competition for free agents.

I don't know what to do about the length of the game-I feel like this is a pitching development issue that would be reversed by an emphasis on control over velocity-so, not something that would be in a CBA. Maybe reduce ad breaks (ha).
 
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33397392/mlb-lockout-only-reinforces-certain-ugliness-game

Disincentivizing tanking should be an easy decision, IMO. Tanking gains an MLB team relatively little. With basketball (for example), a single draft pick is 20% of the starting lineup, and a person who could be fed the ball as often as possible. With baseball, a single draft pick is 11% (or 10% if you are a DH pervert) of the starting lineup, and everyone needs to take a turn. Plus, an individual team's development system would have such an impact. Cleveland has had one of the better farm systems in the league despite never tanking. Same with the Dodgers. The Phillies have had four straight years of top 10 picks and almost nothing to show for it (jury is still out on Bohm). Tanking gives so little advantage compared to how much it hurts the game, but the owners IMO want less competition for free agents.

I don't know what to do about the length of the game-I feel like this is a pitching development issue that would be reversed by an emphasis on control over velocity-so, not something that would be in a CBA. Maybe reduce ad breaks (ha).

I'm glad to see there is at least one other purist on the planet who believes that baseball is not played with 10 players. What's next, a shortfielder?

I pray that the DH never comes to the NL. Posrep.
 
I'm glad to see there is at least one other purist on the planet who believes that baseball is not played with 10 players. What's next, a shortfielder?

I pray that the DH never comes to the NL. Posrep.

I'm with you on the DH. However, I think pitching is under rated at 11%. IMHO, the pitcher is as important to defense s the rest of the players combined. Pitchers who consistently throw high quality strikes are highly sought after players.

I'm not in for banning shifts. Let the hitters adjust to where the fielders stand. If the hitter can't or won't adjust, management will have to decide if the minus hitting is over balanced by other positives.

Personal shift story: softball season, I consistently hit to right field. One team massively shifted, putting all outfielders between straight away center field and the right field line. Second pitch I ripped deep into left field. Next at bat, no shift.
 
I'm with you on the DH. However, I think pitching is under rated at 11%. IMHO, the pitcher is as important to defense s the rest of the players combined. Pitchers who consistently throw high quality strikes are highly sought after players.

I'm not in for banning shifts. Let the hitters adjust to where the fielders stand. If the hitter can't or won't adjust, management will have to decide if the minus hitting is over balanced by other positives.

Personal shift story: softball season, I consistently hit to right field. One team massively shifted, putting all outfielders between straight away center field and the right field line. Second pitch I ripped deep into left field. Next at bat, no shift.

I think hitting in slow pitch softball might be a tad more difficult than hitting against MLB pitching. Especially since pitch sequencing and location is designed to make you hit it into the shift. It’s not exactly easy for a LH hitter to hit 95 on the inner third to the left side. I’m not for banning the shift but it’s a lot more complicated than telling hitters “just hit it the other way!”
 
Nothing pisses me off more when two sides are both making $$ hand over fist and can’t come to an agreement.
Baseball is a dying sport. And instead of fixing it, they are just making it die faster.
Kids don’t watch it; most adults rarely have the 3 1/2 average hours it takes to sit down and watch as well.
I love baseball but am sick over this latest impasse.

I still enjoy baseball but increasingly I know less and less people who do. This crap between owners and players only makes it worse.
 
the vast majority of MLB players are not making $$ hand over fist. A tiny % of active players are actually making a lot of money. Most are making near the minimum (which is a good annual salary, but considering most professional athletes don't get training for other careers, that minimum salary is not a lot to live on during and after their playing years).
 
the vast majority of MLB players are not making $$ hand over fist. A tiny % of active players are actually making a lot of money. Most are making near the minimum (which is a good annual salary, but considering most professional athletes don't get training for other careers, that minimum salary is not a lot to live on during and after their playing years).

Yeah, I like how the article above puts it.

In the middle is the fan, who might be tempted to blame the billionaires and the millionaires -- but that would be incorrect, and simplistic. Some players are millionaires. Nearly all of the owners are billionaires. As the money has risen, the players' share has fallen -- four years in a row and counting. All economies have a middle class, and baseball's -- like America's -- has been shrinking.

It's not much to ask for minimum salaries and mid-level contracts to go up as revenues and the biggest contracts increase.
 
The people making those big salaries are part of the reason that owners are against the lower ones going up. Especially when the owners known that they are usually sinking tens of millions of dollars at the end of these major contracts.
 
Pessimistic. Will only get harder to come to an agreement as this continues. If a 2nd week of the season is cancelled, several players including Ohtani lose a year of service time before reaching free agency. It will only get harder to negotiate a resolution as making up for the lost salaries and service time are simply more issues that the MLBPA won't cave on. Both sides f'd up. The players wanted a war because they felt they lost the negotiation in 2016, and the owners were more than happy to give to them a war and play hardball as many owners don't mind giving up the early part of the season if it means that they don't have to meet payroll. If there is no settlement within two weeks, there may not be MLB baseball for a long time, as in another BS 60 game season like in 2020. Kind of a weird side note is that the lockout only impacts MLB players on 40 man rosters. So, all the MLB facilities are open, and minor leaguers and non-rostered former MLB players like Dee Gordon, have been in Spring Training. The minor league season will go on as planned.
 
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I haven't been following super close but have not felt the players were being unreasonable in their asks or looking for a war, although I have seen it speculated they are trying to make up for a bad deal in 2016. They're not taking a hard line on CBT. Their primary objective is getting younger players paid earlier in response to owners/GMs figuring out how to game the current system (and players losing their revenue share as a result).

And honestly, this is the course the the owners wanted. They made more money in the shortened season and they are doing it again to keep profits for themselves.
 
MLB did offer to raise the minimum salary to very close to what the MLBPA wanted and added to $30 million to the 2nd year player arbitration pool. Those are the younger player comp issues.

From the reporting, the big stumbling block was the Competitive Balance Tax. MLB last offer was a CBT threshold at $220 million, with a heavy tax at that point, and no graduated raise in that threshold for the next three years. MLBPA wasn't close on that issue. The CBT is not a younger player compensation issue; it's a mega free agent blocks buster contract issue. The owners could've budged on the CBT issue because they amount of their payroll is controllable by them. It's really a small market versus large market issue, and mega free agent issue.
 
But Manfred said he is just trying to give the fans what they want! Expanded playoffs and no shift. Neither of which I’ve heard one person ask for.

I'm not following the lockout but seriously? Manfred is trying to ban defensive shifts? That is dumb as fuck. That is a defensive strategy, if a batter doesn't like it, learn to hit it to opposite field.
 
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